Fireflies
by JadeEye
Summary: Set between STC Season 2 and 3. Rei. Hotaru. Death is not an option.
1. Chapter 1

**title:** fireflies

**chapter**: one

**summary:** Set between STC Season 2 and 3. Rei. Hotaru. Death is not an option.

**disclaimer:**Naoko Takeuchi owns Sailor Moon.

**author's note:** This fic is a companion to the series _Subject to Change_. It will make absolutely_ no sense_ if you have not read _**STC Season 1**_, which is available under the profile **EightofSwords**, and _**Season 2**_, which can be found on **JadeEye**'s profile page.

"fireflies" follows Hotaru and Rei after they leave Japan to keep Hotaru hidden from anyone who might try to revive Sailor Saturn. Reading it isn't necessary to understand Season 3, but it will eventually intersect with its plot.

O

"The burnt child dreads the fire."

– Ben Jonson, _The Devil is an Ass_

O

Rei's not a liar, not any more than the dark-haired fourteen-year-old who's been trotting quietly after her for these past two months is a chatter-box. But the fact that she's been dragging the child across literally every continent except Antarctica and still hasn't told her _why_ is beginning to make her feel like she is one.

And she doesn't like the feeling.

Of course, the fact that Hotaru has docilely trotted along after her for every kilometer of said trip and never once asked _what the hell are you doing with me?_ bothers Rei, too, but she's not sufficiently self-aware yet to realize that it's Hotaru's very docility and apparent trust in a person she really doesn't even really _know_ that bothers her. Instead Rei puts the itchy frustration she feels down to impatience with the job and with herself, and not down to an overprotectiveness of a girl she's only known for two months. And she decides that she's going to tell Hotaru the truth. As soon as they get out of this musty-smelling taxi and into the apartment Rei saw advertised in the newspaper at the airport, she's going to tell her.

O

Sailor Mercury had begun to apartment-hunt in the weeks leading up to Christmas, circling newspaper listings and talking to real estate agents and property managers and researching utility costs and dragging an annoyed Rei through every step of the process. Now, of course, Rei realizes that Mercury had never intended to rent an apartment herself but had in fact been preparing Rei for this day. It would have been shocking for Rei to realize that even then Mercury had known that they would find Saturn's reincarnation and send her into hiding with Rei, had Rei not already been thoroughly accustomed to just how far into the future Mercury's planning always extended.

To her, the rest of them were little more than pieces on a chessboard, and while this thought irritates Rei, she finds herself wishing, as she walks into the apartment lease office with her heart in her mouth and feeling like her youth and inexperience is as obvious on her face as Serena's ugly scars, that she had paid a little more attention to Mercury's careful preparation of her.

But as Rei clears her throat and says – pretty confidently, she thinks – that she wants to rent a two-room unit, the apartment manager leads her and Hotaru up to a second-floor unit without even an arched brow at how young they both look. This lack of curiosity in itself is enough to make Rei declare the unit satisfactory, though she registers little more than dark rooms, plastic-covered furniture, and a tiny kitchen. They go back down to the manager's office, where he takes her (fake) ID card and deposit without batting an eye, and sneezes into a wadded-up tissue as she completes the paperwork he hands her.

Fifteen perspiring moments later, she has three keys (two for the room, one for the mailbox) clutched in her sweaty hand, and she and Hotaru climb the stairs again back to the apartment.

A tiny breakfast bar with two stools separates the kitchen from the living area. Rei, her legs feeling absolutely like noodles beneath her, goes to sit on one. But the moment she is sitting down her muscles begin to tremble even harder, and she stands back up again, gripping the fake granite countertop and looking at the pale girl who is still hovering by the door as if unsure of where to be.

Rei tells her that she's Sailor Saturn and that if she transforms, it'll destroy the whole planet.

O

In retrospect, Rei's haste to get the whole thing off her chest may have made her phrase it a bit…tactlessly.

This fact becomes apparent to her as Hotaru goes gray-faced and lists suddenly toward to the ground, one of her legs appearing to give way beneath her. With Senshi reflexes Rei catches her and helps her to the plastic-covered couch, which crackles noisily beneath her.

The girl's so thin that her pulse seems to radiate like heat from her sunken chest, her lathe-like wrists. Or maybe that's just Rei's own blood pounding hard as she hovers too close to Hotaru, suddenly regretting her bluntness and hoping that it hasn't just shocked Saturn's flash-form right out of Hotaru. But no, she can't wake up without all three talismans, right?

"Wh–what are you going to do to me?"

"N-nothing!" Rei is horrified to hear herself stammering, too, shocked by the absolute vulnerability in the girl's face as she cringes back into the couch. It's the guilt talking, the fact that when Mercury first explained Sailor Saturn's danger to her, Rei's first thought was that the obvious thing to do with the girl was eliminate her.

She hopes she's changed since then.

"I'm here to_ protect_ you," she mumbles, and shoves her hands into her pockets. The motion makes Hotaru flinch, and their eyes clash, and a strange thing happens to Rei then. She is used to seeing phantoms overlaid the places she walks through, the echoes of the past or fluid phantoms of the future superimposing themselves over the world around her – a laughing child here, a crying mother there. But right now, as she lets her eyes meet Hotaru's, it is as though she has been lifted out of her own mind and into Hotaru's: she is looking up at herself. Except she sees not Rei, with her darting eyes and bitten lip, but Sailor Mars, wearing her old sweater and jeans with shoulders back so that she may as well be wearing her fuku, flames burning behind her eyes and into the girl before her.

This is how Hotaru sees her. Not as a human being but as a Sailor Senshi. Alien, dangerous, frightening.

Rei has never felt like that; she has only felt too-on-the-edge, always scrambling to stay on, screaming or flailing or holding her breath and staying absolutely still lest she topple over into the crevice. The person Hotaru sees shakes her to her very core. She doesn't know how long she stands there, or how long it is before her mind descends again into her own body and she is looking down at the girl toward whom she can now almost tangibly feel herself softening. There is a strange ache in her arm, as though it wants to be lifted, and she realizes that it – she – wants to touch Hotaru comfortingly, to somehow make her less afraid.

She puts her other arm up, holding it to her side. "That's not an option," she says stiffly, and goes to the suitcase in the corner to begin unpacking.

O

Hotaru can remember only one other moving-in in her life. It was after the fire that killed her mother. There had been a brand-new house, brand-new furniture, brand-new pots and pans…brand-new Papa. A Papa who carried boxes silently and tirelessly into the new house one moment and gasped with sudden strained hysterical laughter and sank to the floor with his hands in his hair the next. Hotaru had walked on eggshells around her father then, and now, with Sailor Mars, it seems prudent to do the same.

The Senshi seems like she wants to say something – she keeps taking a breath and looking up as though about to speak, then letting out the breath in a short, tense exhalation and going back to unpacking wires and a Radio Shack's worth of computer equipment from out of that invisible magic pocket of hers instead. Hotaru wishes she would just say whatever it is, because she has dozens of questions bubbling up in her own throat. But she doesn't dare break the silence, so they build up like fizz in her stomach, making her feel nervous and sick. "_Not an option_," she had said. What kind of answer was that? Did that mean she _wanted_ to get rid of Hotaru, she just couldn't? Or wasn't allowed to? Or that it wasn't an option – _yet_?

"Dinner?"

Hotaru looks up from folding her small pile of clothing. Mars has her hands in her pockets and is by the door.

"You ready for dinner?" she clarifies without looking at Hotaru.

Hotaru scrambles to her feet, trotting after her down the steps. The apartment building is located on a street otherwise occupied by small houses and looming oak trees that makes it seem purely residential, but a few blocks down Hotaru can make out a shopping plaza's lights glowing in the twilight. It's in this plaza that they find a fluorescent-bulb-lit pizza joint, clearly meant more for delivery pick-up than to eat in, but there are a few uncomfortable tables on the dingy white and black tile, and Mars and Hotaru slide into one as they wait for their pizza. It's a plain cheese pizza; Hotaru doesn't dare ask if she can have anchovies added to her half.

"So," says Mars.

Hotaru's eyes slide from the blue-haired boy popping gum at the register to Mars.

"What I said before," Mars begins to say, then seems to change her mind. "You know, I'm not…I'm not really…_Mars_."

Hotaru doesn't understand. "You're pretending?" she says blankly. But she had seen her attack that other Senshi with fire –

"Not pretending. It's just that – I'm not _Mars_. I'm Rei Hino."

Hotaru nods. Fidgets with her straw wrapper, folding it into a tiny accordion. "I see." They don't talk again until the pizza comes, and then, as they politely each wait for the other to take a piece first, and neither of them do, Mars gruffly grabs a piece and puts it on Hotaru's plate, then takes one for herself. They chew silently for a few minutes.

Then Mars bursts out: "So…that's it? _I see?_ That's all you have to say?"

Hotaru swallows a mouthful of oily cheese. "Um?"

"I mean," says the older girl slowly, "if someone told me I was a Senshi and didn't give me any proof, I'd have questions."

"Like…are you on mind-altering pharmaceuticals?" ventures Hotaru.

Something that can't possibly be an honest-to-God smile pulls weakly at the Senshi's mouth. "Exactly."

"You…you gave me proof, though. I mean – I've seen you as a Senshi." Too late, Hotaru remembers that they're in public, and her eyes widen apologetically, but Mars just raises a brow, and Hotaru realizes, _You're not in Kansas anymore, Dorothy. _She's in America, and most people here have probably never heard of the Sailor Senshi, and in fact, those that have probably don't think they're _real_. She herself had thought they were just another live-action Power Ranger rip-off until she saw them in action in the park one day.

It also suddenly occurs to her to wonder if she's speaking in Japanese right now. If she is, would she be able to tell, or would the device Mars gave her to put in her ear just make it sound like English anyway?

"But the rest of it." Mars hesitates again, though her intense dark gaze don't flinch away from Hotaru's. "The world-destroying part, you…you seem to be believing me pretty easily on that."

Rei doesn't add that if it were her, she would bluster and deny to anyone that they could blame that on her, that she would get violently defensive about it, not just lie down and ask if they were going to kill her.

"I…_see_ things, sometimes." Hotaru hesitates. How to say, even to someone as battle-hardened as a Senshi, that you see people as skeletons sometimes. That was how she'd seen Mars the first time, when she appeared outside Senator Hino's mansion. It was something that had happened to her since she was little, and she had put it down to something wrong with her, maybe something related to Papa's modifications – he had told her as much, the first time she tried to tell him about it, and the flash of interest in his eyes had scared her, made her make the sights seem like less of a deal and less often than they were, so he had lost interest and said that it could merely be little glitches as her native neurons and the ones he had implanted struggled to communicate with each other. And maybe it was, but maybe it had something to do with this Sailor Saturn thing, too.

All she could remember from school was that in mythology Saturn had been the father of the other gods. How did that translate, power-wise? Mars was the god of war, but Sailor Mars had the power of fire. "What is Saturn the Senshi of?"

"Death."

Hotaru nods. "That makes more sense."

Mars doesn't ask why. They finish their pizza in silence, and on the short walk home discuss very mundane things: grocery shopping that will have to be done, enrolling Hotaru in school, what kind of transportation they will use. Hotaru almost hates to peek out from under these safe, everyday things that wrap around her like a protective blanket, but she has to ask one more thing before Mars returns to the grim-faced taciturn person she was before tonight.

"How do you know I – I mean, Saturn will destroy the world if she wakes up?"

The keys stop scratching in the apartment door's lock. Mars' shoulders are stiff. A moment passes, then she moves the keys, unlocking it with a single wrench. It's only after she wrenches it open, and after she has disappeared into the darkness inside, that her low words drift back to Hotaru.

"Because it's happened before."


	2. Chapter 2

**title:** fireflies

**chapter**: two

**summary:** Set between STC Season 2 and 3. Rei. Hotaru. Death is not an option.

**disclaimer:**Naoko Takeuchi owns Sailor Moon.

O

It's 9:02 a.m. on a Saturday morning, and Hotaru and Mars are sitting in the mall parking lot in the used red Honda that Rei bought a month ago.

An employee came out just a few minutes ago to unlock the doors to the Sears they have parked in front of. Hotaru was afraid Mars would make them go into the store right then, but Mars seems just as reluctant as her to go in so quickly, and Hotaru is realizing that maybe Mars has a lot of the same thoughts she has. That maybe she doesn't want to go into the store when they will be the only ones in there for the employees to pay attention to. That maybe the reason she agreed so quickly when Hotaru suggested they go at nine right when the store opened ("to, you know, beat the crowds," Hotaru had explained hastily) was because she was as internally terrified as Hotaru was of encountering people in the Saturday afternoon mall rush.

It makes Hotaru feel a little better. A little braver. Brave enough to reach for the door handle and say, "Ready?"

Mars says nothing, just gets out of the car and falls into step with Hotaru as they walk across the mostly empty parking lot.

Here is how the situation came about: For the weeks and weeks that the Sailor Senshi spent dragging Hotaru from one corner of the planet to another – literally the only continents they hadn't gone to were Antarctica and Australia, which had rather disappointed Hotaru, for she would have liked to see a penguin or a kangaroo – the two of them lived out of airport gift shops and Mars' suitcases. This provided more variety than one might think, since Rei had not only the carry-ons they wheeled from one flight to the next but also several full-sized ones that she pulled out of what appeared to be thin air but is actually, Hotaru now knows, her "Subspace pocket." These suitcases contained clothing in both their sizes: sweaters, cargo pants, turtlenecks, waterproof parkas, flip-flips…everything except bras.

Mars doesn't have much of a _décolletage_, as Kaori-san would put it. She doesn't have to do much more than put on a cami or tank top underneath her shirt to look presentable, so Hotaru can understand her having forgotten to pack more substantial undergarments. (Except she still isn't entirely sure that Mars is the one who packed the suitcases, since Rei herself often seemed perplexed by some article of clothing she pulled out.) But Hotaru is not that blessed, or rather is overly blessed, and the only bra that she has (the one that she was, luckily, wearing under her pajamas the night Mars came and took her away from the senator's house) has torn near the outermost hook and is one deep breath away from ripping altogether. If she waits any longer to replace it, she might find herself making a very strong first impression on her first day or school on Monday.

The very thought made her moan and squish her hands against her face as though to squeeze the embarrassment out of her head. And it was with much the same pose that she had gone up to Rei the day before and mumbled from behind her hands that she needed to buy a bra.

Mars had gotten a look on her face that Hotaru had never seen before, a startled sort of look, then slightly scared. But she had nodded her silent nod and swallowed more of the black coffee she always seems to be holding.

Now, they walk into the Sears store and make a beeline for the women's section. Hotaru's shoulders are hunched as though to hide her face from any passers-by who might see them, and Mars isn't much better as they pause before the section full of bra-filled racks.

"Do you know what kind you need?" she mutters under her breath, barely loud enough for Hotaru to hear.

Hotaru has never felt so awkward, so embarrassed, in her life, not even the time that shop girl had walked in on her in the changing room when she was trying on dresses for Papa's wedding. How can she tell a _Senshi_ that she had no idea which of these bras to try on? She has been wearing the same five generic sports bras since she first grew a chest in sixth grade two years ago. And she doesn't see any sports bras amid these lacy, patterned things. "I…"

"Why, hello!"

Hotaru goes dead white. Had she been looking at Rei's face, she would have seen it do the same. A sales representative stands beside them, already pulling a white measuring tape out of the pocket of her smart blue business coat. "Are you ladies here to be fitted?"

"Uh – um – "

The woman flashes a white smile. "It's so important to have a bra that fits! So many women walk around not knowing that the one they're wearing aren't the proper size – if you wear one that's too loose or too tight, it can cause you back problems later on!" She is ushering them into the fitting rooms as she talks and then, before Hotaru can protest, into one of the stalls. "It's a very easy process, go ahead and take your shirt off and we can measure you – "

Nausea is pushing up through Hotaru's throat. All she can think is that if she takes off her shirt this woman will see all of her scars. Her eyes dart, this way and that, a trapped animal desperate for escape.

"Actually," comes Mars' voice, and the Senshi ducks, clumsily – more clumsily than Hotaru has ever seen her move, than Hotaru even thought she _could_ move – around to stand between Hotaru and the woman. Her face is uncharacteristically red. "_I_ came to be fitted."

"Oh. _Oh_.Well, of course! Sweetheart, if you just want to wait outside…" And practically before Hotaru knows what has happened, she has been deposited outside the changing room stall and it has been re-locked behind her.

"All right, here, I'll hang that shirt up for you…" comes the saleswoman's voice, and then a, "Well! Now, young lady, you know sports bras don't give our breasts the support they need."

Hotaru, over the relieved rush of blood through her ears, hears Mars mumble something. It sounds like…but it _couldn't_ be…

"A girl your age and you've never come for a proper fitting?" The woman tsks, and Hotaru's eyes are wide. _Mars_ has never shopped for bras either? "Don't you worry, honey, we'll get you fixed right up. You'll be shocked by how much better you'll look!"

O

It's 10:13 a.m. on a Saturday morning, and Rei has never been so humiliated in her life. Bad enough that she could sense the woman was laughing at her, behind all her polite shoptalk, for having her first bra fitting at _seventeen,_ but the fact that Hotaru had been there and _heard _it all… Rei feels like throwing up from the shame.

She can tell the younger girl is thinking about it as she trots across the parking lot beside Rei, swinging her bag; she feels the from-the-corner-of-her-eye glances Hotaru keeps sending at her. Rei's hands clench around the plastic bag full of bras; she grinds her teeth –

"Th-thank you, Rei-san!"

"For your bras?" _Or for the hilarious spectacle of my bra fitting?_ Rei wrenches open the driver's side door and spits out, "You're _welcome_."

"No, not – I mean – well, for that, too, but –" Hotaru is stumbling, both in words and steps. It makes Rei feel suddenly, unwelcomingly bad for snapping at her, which only makes her more upset. She _wants_ to be angry. It's better than feeling humiliated. "But – I mean – for – distracting the woman so she wouldn't…see."

And there goes the anger. Rei grits her teeth, trying to summon it back. But it's no match for the sad, bowed head a meter away from her.

"Sorry," she grits out. "I shouldn't have snapped at you. I'm just – " Her voice drops to a mutter, "embarrassed."

She sighs. Hotaru lifts her head the tiniest bit, peering at Rei from beneath her thick bangs, but she doesn't say anything. Rei exhales and unlocks the car doors. She puts the key into the ignition and waits for the click of Hotaru's seatbelt over the rustle of the shopping bags, then thinks to ask, "Did you get the ones you need?"

"I – I think so."

Rei's brows descend a little at the hesitance. "You _think_ so?"

"Well, I…I'm not sure exactly what size I am, but they fit…okay."

There is a pause. Until Hotaru, sounding almost defensive, says, "My dad – he wasn't so good with the girl stuff. We just got sports bras and – it's just – I didn't want to bother him." She finishes in a mumble, the defensiveness in her voice fading to resignation. "I didn't want to make him think of Mom."

Rei doesn't say anything for another minute. They sit there, the fir tree-shaped air freshener on the rearview mirror twisting in the hot air gusting from the vents.

Inside, Rei's thinking about seventh grade when her chest started changing like the other girls'. When she didn't know what to do, and she had just moved in with grandpa and she couldn't _ask _an old man about something like that, and she'd tried to wear her uniform coat in class by telling the sisters she was cold, and they'd let her, for a while, until Sister Mary got fed up and slapped her ruler on Rei's desk and ordered her to take her coat off _now_. And then there had been giggles and tittering and humiliation and blinked-away tears and a phone call from Sister Mary to Grandfather that he needed to get the girl some proper attire, surely you've noticed she's developing into a young lady? But Grandfather hadn't looked at her back then, not any more than he had to, because she was Rei and not Hiotsukeru. He hadn't looked at her when she'd gotten home from school that day either; they'd both deliberately avoided each others' eyes, and when she got to her room there was a box sitting next to her futon, and inside it was a set of old junior high uniforms, ugly ones with rough woolen blouses and chunky-zippered skirts, and jammed beneath them as though her mother had shoved them there hastily before she ran away for the auditions that would set her on the path to celebrity, were a few bras.

And it's one of those that Rei's wearing right now, still, as the pile of new bras sit in the bag next to Hotaru's feet, and it feels too loose for the first time, like a snake skin she should have shed but is dragging along around her, like a blanket still clutched in her hand, dragging on the floor and gathering dirt.

Rei doesn't say any of this. She just takes her hand off the parking brake and looks across the parking lot at the mall entrance and says gruffly, "Do you want to get anything else? I don't want you to have to go to school in clothes you don't like."

Hotaru looks confused, then surprised. Then she smiles.

Rei does, too.


	3. Chapter 3

**title:** fireflies

**chapter**: three

**summary:** Set between STC Season 2 and 3. Rei. Hotaru. Death is not an option.

**disclaimer: **Naoko Takeuchi owns Sailor Moon.

O

Hotaru calls her father every day.

O

There's a graffiti-covered pay phone between the student parking lot and the cafeteria at the high school in which Mars enrolled her. At first Hotaru was afraid to use it because only a few meters away a group of older kids sit sprawled on the curb, passing something back and forth between them and watching everyone who comes near with gazes that are both hazy and metal-edged, watchful, reminding her of Papa.

But school was the only time that Mars let Hotaru out of her sight. Hotaru had surreptitiously tried, and failed, to call her father from the grocery store, the mall, the apartment lobby, even a pay phone on the corner of their block that turned out not to work. So finally she braved the phone booth at school, inching toward it, glancing cautiously at the older kids. Two of them were watching her; a skinny boy in a too-big jacket had elbowed the bigger boy next to him, saying something, and they both watched her silently, like lions watching an antelope edge toward the watering hole. Hotaru fairly ran the last few steps to the booth, picking up the sticky phone. She had already used a coin to scratch visible the numbers on the international phone card she'd slid into her pocket on their last shopping trip. She didn't know if she'd been more terrified then, stealing for the first time, or now, pressing her back to the cold metal of the phone booth and trying to split her attention between the numbers on the card and the upperclassmen watching outside. A thought flashed through her mind, bright and fleeting as a flash of lightning: What would it feel like not to be scared?

(that was the first time she imagined what it would be like to transform into Sailor Saturn)

Then her father's voicemail message was playing. "This is Dr. Soichi Tomoe. Leave your name, number, and reason for calling—" And Hotaru was gabbling something scared and sobbed and pleading into the phone. She'd rehearsed, rewritten, played in her head for weeks what she would tell him, something that would be enough information to let him know she was okay but not enough to tell him where she was, but she didn't even know what came out of her mouth in those moments, if she'd asked him to come find her or told him where she was; in fact, when the beep cut off her message, she realized she didn't even know if she'd spoken Japanese or English.

"Use your words, Hotaru." That's one of her first memories of him with his new eyes, her face hot and puffy from sobbing and the pain, and a teddy bear being pulled from her hands. "Adults don't respond well to crying. Express yourself like a human being."

She was crying on the message, and suddenly there's this new terror in her, that even if he understands it he won't listen to it, he'll delete it like the messages he gets from students or professors he deems unworthy of his time. She wasn't calm enough, wasn't succinct, mature, enough. So she swallows down the fear, the tears and mucus in her throat, tries not to see the kids outside nudging each other as they watch her and twirl their fingers "cuckoo," and dials the number again.

"Papa—" Her voice hoarse but clear this time, in careful Japanese that sounds strange on her mouth after so long without speaking it. "Papa, it's Hotaru. I'm sorry about my last message. I'm…" A pause, a deep breath. Clearly, Hotaru. "I can only call right now, at—" She did the math and felt slightly hopeful; it was 2 a.m. in Japan now, maybe he was sleeping and hadn't heard his phone ring, "two o'clock your time. Can you…can you be at the phone then tomorrow?" She gripped the phone more tightly. "Please?"

O

Hotaru calls her father every day. But not once has he picked up.

O

Until today. There's a different pause that comes after the eight rings, a longer one, like someone's picked up the phone. And Hotaru's heart pauses, too, breathless. Then:

"Sorry. Client's message box is full."

An automated voice. Hotaru puts the phone carefully back into its cradle and looks out across the street, blinking away the hot film on her eyes.

Mars is standing on the opposite curb.

Leaning against an electric pole, arms at her sides. Looking past Hotaru like she doesn't even see her there.

But she does. Hotaru knows she does. Knows it at the same time she suddenly knows that Mars has never actually had let her out of her sight, that she has known _each and every time_ Hotaru tried to call her father.

(it's the worst feeling of violation)

Hotaru half runs, half strides out of the phone booth, right into one of the kids who sit and watch her every day as he is coming out of the cafeteria with a basket of mozzarella sticks. All she bites out is "Sorry," not a flinch, not a double-take of fear, just her hand shoving open the cafeteria doors and her feet carrying her inside, inside a crowded place where Sailor Mars can't follow her.

For the rest of the school day she imagines going to the police. Planting her feet in front of them and saying, "I'm Hotaru Tomoe. I was kidnapped." But even as she imagines it she shrinks from it, because that's the thing about anger (her anger); as soon as tries to do something with it, it darts back inside her, like a groundhog scared by its own shadow, huddling inside her, safe and cramped in the dark. _No, Papa, it's okay._

The red Honda pulls up in the car line at three-thirty sharp. Hotaru gets in. There is silence. When they get to the apartment, Hotaru's torn between creeping silently to her room and stomping up to it to make Mars know she's furious. She begins to do the latter, but her footsteps are so loud she flinches into the former, flushing and face prickling and all the more furious, this time at herself for being such a coward.

She folds herself up in the closet, putting her suitcase in front of her and piling dirty clothes on top of herself, hoping Mars will come to find her and not be able to find her and panic that she has run away.

She wants Mars to be scared. She wants Mars to hurt.

She must fall asleep in there, because she wakes up in the dark a while later and hits her head hard against the shelf above her. There's some light coming through the window blinds from the streetlamps, and it reflects off something on Hotaru's bed: Mars's dark eyes. She sits against Hotaru's headboard like a corpse, facing ahead; she doesn't look over at Hotaru even though she must have heard her head hit the shelf.

_Get out of my bed._

But it's not Hotaru's bed, not really. Nothing here is hers, nothing in the whole _world_ is hers, and she crams herself deeper under the shelf, smelling mothballs and unwashed clothes and the too-sweet scent of deodorant from the dirty t-shirt into which she's pressed her face.

O

In the morning, Mars is gone, Hotaru's bedspread as neat and smooth as if Mars had never been there, and Hotaru's neck is sore and aching.

(the pain makes her remember)

Remember waiting for the right moment to ask Papa to sign a permission slip for a field trip to the skating rink he thinks is too dangerous for you to visit, or to the cherry blossom festival at the temple even though he doesn't approve of religion? Remember waiting until after a painful procedure, when hot water had leaked out your eyes despite your best efforts, and your head drooped far enough forward that the tears plopped onto Papa's hand? So he couldn't ignore it, and the furrow of his forehead above his artificial eye would unwrinkle a bit as he looked at you, and he looked like your Papa again, your Papa from before.

That was the moment to act. That moment, when he put a cold hand to your shoulder and asked if there was anything he could do, anything I can do to make it better, my little girl, you've been so good, so brave.

Pain and guilt, they're tools just like anesthetics and anticoagulants, and if you apply them in the right amount they work just the way you need them to.

(and that's the worst part because if you're a victim you're supposed to be blameless but being a victim teaches you how to deceive, how to cheat—

—how not to be a victim)

O

In the seventeen days since settling into the apartment, Rei thinks that she and Hotaru have settled into a routine. At six-thirty every morning, Hotaru comes into the main room, where Rei sits at their little breakfast bar, scanning various cities' news on her laptop: Hong Kong, Moscow, Auckland, New York, London, Zurich.

Not Tokyo.

Sometimes, in those early gray hours limned by the red glow of the microwave clock, before Hotaru shuffles in with her bed head and heavy-lidded eyes, Rei wonders when that weight between her shoulder blades and inside her sinuses, like some divine gaze pressing down on her, will stop. If it ever will. If it's Mercury, or if it's Mars. Because sometimes it's hot and sometimes it's cold, and never is it comfortable.

Breakfast for Rei is coffee, black with two sugars. Cereal for Hotaru. Rei doesn't ask if Hotaru wants Cocoa Puffs; they just appear in the pantry after she sees Hotaru eyeing them wistfully at the store. Hotaru crunches each puff individually, studiously, sometimes with her front teeth, sometimes with her back, as she studies the dietary facts on the back of the box each morning. She must have every daily value percentage memorized by now, but Rei's too busy (scared) to start a conversation. She's never done this before, never taken care of someone before, been responsible for their safety (their happiness). Deep down where she won't admit it to herself she's terrified and ashamed of her failure at it thus far. She thinks of Grandpa a lot more often than she wants to, reliving old memories from his perspective, feeling bad for every time she'd brushed off his attempts to talk to her or ignored the not-quite gifts he'd left out for her: new shoes on her bed, or fugu in the fridge, or a new, old picture of her mother on the table.

Hotaru wears long sleeves, always. There are no uniforms in the small Wisconsin town they've settled in, but Hotaru dresses like there are: skirts and sweaters, black leggings, and neatly collared white shirts. Rei wears whatever she spent the night in, sometimes plops a baseball cap on her head. There's nothing to dress up for: Once she's dropped Hotaru off at school, she just drives in long, slow circuits around it, idly, sometimes parking, sometimes not, always listening. Sensing. Waiting. Ignoring the ghosts that sometimes finger her aura hopefully, sad and confused.

(the worst ones are the ones that don't care about being sent on, the ones who've lingered here so long that they just float, translucent and mindless like jellyfish in the water, drifting through her instead of against her)

At three o'clock she turns the Honda back toward the school and pulls into the pick-up line to wait for the three-thirty dismissal.

O

Hotaru begins to look wan and anxious when she slides into the car. Rei worries about bullies, ghosts, the flu that's going around. Flashforms, mono, nightmares that could be keeping her from getting enough sleep. More bullies. She pictures cruel notes left inside her locker, sticky things blown into her hair, feet extended in the hallway to trip her, jeering in the locker room. Teachers who don't care, teachers who care too much. She takes Hotaru shopping, buys her the fashions in the display windows and on the posing mannequins, wonders if she should buy them a different car, a newer one that no one could make fun of.

Hotaru won't tell her anything, won't even admit anything's wrong, and Rei slides her hands back and forth across the steering wheel, the laptop keyboard, the countertop, the bedspread in Hotaru's room as the sound of uneven breathing comes from the dark closet.

(maybe…maybe I should take you to see someone, her grandfather had said. I think you need to talk to someone. and you won't talk to me…what can I do? What can I do for you, Rei?)

O

"Bra shopping," Rei says that afternoon when Hotaru slides into the car. "I need a bra. Let's go."

Hotaru doesn't say anything, just leans her head against the window.

Rei drums her fingers on the steering wheel. "Did you…did you have something you wanted to do this weekend?" She hasn't asked if Hotaru has made any friends, wonders now if she should have. "I can…take you, if you want."

A quiet sigh of air from Hotaru. "No," she says in a small voice. "I know we have to keep a low profile. I understand."

That isn't what Rei wanted. Not what she wanted at all, but she's only realizing that now. "Hotaru, you can have _friends_. You can have a normal life."

"How?" says Hotaru. "You won't even look up Tokyo news on the computer because you're afraid someone might track us I've seen the list of places you have for us to go once we've stayed here too long. Why should I try to make friends and have a normal life when we're just going to be leaving?" She turns her face back to the window, head drooping against the glass, her voice not angry or accusing, just tired. "Better not to try."

Rei feels wretched. "What can I do?" She knows she can't even begin to make up for what she's taken away from Hotaru, and that an attempt to try is only to make herself feel better, but she wants this more than anything. _What can I do? What can I do for you?_

"Can't I talk to Papa?" Hotaru's voice cracks. "Just once?"

Rei goes cold. And hard. Like Sailor Mars. Her fingers stop drumming the steering wheel and grip it instead. "No."

A hiccup, a strangled sound. A trembling breath sucked in.

"Mars, _please_."

Rei flinches at the name. Hotaru watches her swallow, push past it.

"I don't understand why you want to talk to him," she says, and the (hurt) bewilderment her voice sounds like she really is trying to understand. "Hotaru, he _experimented_ on you."

There's no reason Hotaru could give her that would make sense to her. no reason Hotaru has that makes sense to _herself_. There's just that he's her papa and even if she's scary he's still there. He's still hers and she's still his because he's the only one these scars belong to other than her, and sometimes she thinks the scars rope them together more than their blood does, because if she's the one who has to bear them he's the one that caused them, and it's the guilt that keeps him with her. Everyone else is scared and repelled by them but he will (can) never be, because they're his as much as hers.

"He's my dad," is all she says, because Mars won't (doesn't want to) understand.

"You're scared of him," Mars says.

"You can love someone and be scared of them."

"You shouldn't."

"I'm scared of _you._"

Mars doesn't say anything for a minute. Then, abruptly, she says, "He went missing. After we left. I don't know where he is." Her eyes stay on the road, her hands on the wheel. "I swear I'm not lying to you."

Hotaru. Stares at her.

Scrabbling up the inside of her skull there's terror. Terror that he'll come for her and terror that he won't.

"He's coming for me," she says, half asking, half warning.

Mars's lips tighten. It doesn't seem possible that they're having this conversation, in the glaring afternoon sun with a Top 40 channel playing quietly on the radio and loud high schoolers skateboarding gleefully across the crosswalk in front of them. "I think he's dead."

It was like the moment when you wake up from a dream and you have to blink, to resituate in your brain what is reality and what is not.

"I—I don't believe you," she says, cold and hard, because maybe Rei's rubbed off on her more than either of them know.

Mars just hands Hotaru her own cell phone. The icon in the top corner of the screen shows it has an international SIM card; with trembling fingers, Hotaru dials a number she hasn't dared (hasn't wanted) to call.

"Hotaru?" comes a familiar voice after only two rings. "Oh, God, Hotaru-san! Where are you?"

"Ka-Kaori-san…"

"Hotaru-san, where are you? Is Soichi with you? Please say he's with y—"

Hotaru slowly lowers the phone. Closes it and puts it back into Rei's open palm.

Mars rolls down her window and throws it onto the road in front of them. Hotaru imagines she can feel the bump as the car's tires crush the phone to bits.

O

Ten minutes later, they are at the apartment, packing their things. Three hours later they are twenty-five thousand feet in the air, Hotaru ignoring the bag of peanuts on the fold-down table in front of her in favor of staring out the dark window.

Eight hours later, as Hotaru dozes on a hard plastic airport seat, waiting for their connecting flight, Rei opens her laptop and connects to the airport's wireless internet. Her fingers hesitate on the keyboard. And then, because maybe Hotaru has rubbed off on her more than either of them know, she types her father's name into the search engine.

Hotaru makes a sound in her sleep, one leg jerking. Rei murmurs, "Sshhh," and rests a hand on messy dark hair. Her eyes are filling with something warm and wet as she reads the links that the search engine brought up, as she blinks rapidly because she doesn't know why she's crying. She hated him. She _hated_ him.

_Sshhh. It's okay._

(it's not)


End file.
